Makoto Strategy and Match-ups

losing is good for learning. keep playing her

Abel’s AA options not being any good is a myth. If you jump at a competent Abel player while he’s standing, your’re going to get low fierce juggled into either air grab or ultra 1, and then you’re going to die when you have no way out of his ambiguous roll and throw mixup game. Between stand strong, stand fierce, low forward, and low fierce, Abel has virtually every jumping angle covered, and can potentially take half of your life if he clips you with the end of his elbow.

Your best option is probably to vary your jump timing/trajectory with tsurugi, but only if he’s using ultra 1. If he has ultra 2, you absolutely cannot jump at him when he has it stocked. Even if he has ultra 1, you still run a huge risk of getting juggled into an untechable knockdown and thrown into his ambiguous grinder.

Keep yourself grounded and use your good pokes. Low fierce or stand strong careless rolls, and use your various AA normals on his likely jumping attack of jump forward. Watch out for his jump jab, which has a strange hitbox and seems like it can stuff almost anything seemingly at random. Don’t get predictable with poke patterns, or he’ll EX rekka through and put the hurt on. The absolute most important thing to remember is that you must not get knocked down; your entire gameplan should revolve around making him attempt to break your wall of pokes.

If he does his ultra 2, you need to instantly eyeball the distance between yourself and Abel and decide if you can jump over him. If you can, jump over attempt to punish; if not, jump back to safety and punish (preferably with ultra) when it runs out of steam right in front of you. From what I’ve seen, there is no spacing where you can’t escape that ultra if you immediately use the correct jump. Like I said, don’t get predictable in your poking and you can keep yourself relatively safe.

Hey what do you think about individual threads for character specific matchups. Usually I find it more helpful to have a thread that is about:
Makoto vs Abel

because the way this forum works, it jumps around from character to character, and sometimes I am only having trouble with a specific character. Character specific match up discussion stays focused vs. one character seems more effective. Having one person try to update the first post means we are SOL if that person gets tired if the original poster leaves the community.

I posted about this earlier and was able to replicate it and it just really really saddens me. You cannot ex karakusa adon after he throws a focus attack, your grab will whiff. Sometimes when my opponent and I both start a focus I’ll dash in and ex karakusa. If they let go, I absorb and throw and if they hold it they’ll get choked as well. Apparently you can’t do that to Adon and it just doesn’t make any fucking sense. I mean, its a forward moving attack with 1 hit isn’t this what this move was DESIGNED for? If anyone can explain this that’d be fantastic…

[media=youtube]RYt8IHBxBXU[/media]

It’s kinda hard to see but in that video I recorded adon doing a level 2 focus and dashing forwards as fast as he could like 5 times. I absorbed the hit with ex karakusa at two pretty different times in his hitting animation and still couldn’t get the grab to connect even when it looked like he was already well into his dash animation when my throw animation came out. Anyways, try it yourself if you can’t see my crappy video, its not hard to replicate.

^^It’s set to private bro

Isn’t that because he’s airbourne when he releases the focus attack? Some focuses work like that. Like sakura and makoto too I think.

anyone got anything on the guile matchup??? he’s too safe, can’t jump in on him, can’t focus through booms, can’t use U2 cuz of his crazy recovery. what are we supposed to do?

Chesto!

I’ve never had any problem catching him with U2 after his sonic booms. It is best to guess it coming and just do it, I’ve never missed so far. I have more problems when Guiles decide to rush me down after knockdown, hard to defend for me.

Just try to remain close to him and when he Sonic Boom just Focus Attack Cancel it, dash and Karakusa.

General Info for fighting FB characters: IAT over all the projectiles. If Guile is walking up chances are he wants to c.FP or air throw you. You can change your trajectory in the air with EX Tsurugi and really mess up his timing. You have to do it kinda high to stuff c.FP and if he jumped with you then he is still probably screwed as you knocked him down and is right next to him. If he didn’t tech f.FK(hold) through him this way he loses his charge, you’re right in tip range of Flash Kick so take like a half step back so he can’t FADC his flashkick. At this point it becomes a guessing game because you’re right in range to do IAT, sweep, and c.mp (that kind of goes for all the characters though when you f.FK through them)

Changed.

You’ve probably seen this safe Tsurugi setup on Ryu after a backthrow. [media=youtube]q8I9Ej6NlHQ"[/media]

Against Ryu, if you backthrow, walk backwards a certain distance, then jump forward and do an instant tsurugi, you can hit him safely on wakeup without worrying about getting hit by a reversal. Also, if he blocks high, he blocks it normally, but if he tries to block it low he has to also block it as a crossup, and afterward you will land in front of him even though it crossed him up. All of his reversals will lose or whiff, including super.

This is a very useful tool to learn, as is anything that allows you to avoid a character’s reversals without needing to block and bait them. They can still reversal your mixup afterwards if they block the Tsurugi, but the fact that the Tsurugi option exists means that you can do mixup on their wakeup that doesn’t lose to a SRK. Even the tsurugi itself can be used for mixup, if you change the timing or positioning slightly you can make it not cross up if he crouch blocks or you can do it slightly early so it whiffs and then go into a grab/cr.LK, which are safer now since he can’t SRK if you timed the Tsurugi to hit.

I tested this setup against all of the characters. It works to different extents against other characters besides Ryu, but here’s a list of what those characters can do to beat the timing used for Ryu. Note that just because the timing against Ryu doesn’t work doesn’t mean you can’t change your timing and get it to work on those characters. Will have to explore that later, but for now I just tested what happens with one specific timing.

Listed roughly in order of best to worst.

Very effective (character seemingly cannot punish you for attempting wakeup tsurugi mixup):

Ryu: nothing
Akuma: nothing (teleport avoids it though)

Effective (character has a situational method to punish wakeup tsurugi mixup, but it’s usually safe):

Cammy: nothing if using U1, U2 will counter Tsurugi
Honda: nothing, but if he blocks high he can reversal ultra 2. Unlike most characters this crosses him up even if he stand blocks, so you get a pure 50/50 mixup.
Ken: nothing with U2, with U1 he can hit you when you’re behind him but it’s not the full ultra (240 damage at maximum.)

Situational (character can stop Tsurugi but needs specific meter):

Guile: Tsurugi doesn’t cross him up with this timing, but all flash kicks miss you anyway. Super hits you for 1 hit (40 dmg), Ultra 1 hits you for 1 hit (24 dmg), Ultra 2 hits you for full damage. May be possible to avoid ultra 2 if you use different timing for Guile to cross him up, in which case he basically moves to “very effective”.
Dan: Both ultras win against Tsurugi, super hits you once for 15 damage. All other reversals lose/whiff.
Dudley: Doesn’t cross him up with this timing (may be possible otherwise) but only his Ultras can punish you.
Vega: Doesn’t cross him up with this timing (may be possible otherwise) but couldn’t find a punish other than Ultra 2.
Ibuki: EX Kazekiri (DP kick) wins, ultras whiff. Unlike most characters this crosses her up even if she stand blocks, so you get a pure 50/50 mixup if she doesn’t have meter.

Cautiously useful (character can stop Tsurugi with multiple reversals but can’t without meter):

Rufus: EX Messiah wins, both ultras win. Unlike most characters this crosses him up even if he stand blocks, so you get a pure 50/50 mixup if he doesn’t have meter.
Chun Li: EX SBK wins, Ultra 2 wins, Ultra 1 whiffs. Unlike most characters this crosses her up even if she stand blocks, so you get a pure 50/50 mixup if she doesn’t have meter.
Sakura: EX Shououken wins, both ultras win. Unlike most characters this crosses her up even if she stand blocks, so you get a pure 50/50 mixup if she doesn’t have meter.
Balrog: EX Dash Punch wins, super/ultra 1 win, all headbutts whiff
Bison: Every EX reversal/ultra wins

Questionable (character avoids this Tsurugi timing for some reason but still works against some things):

Makoto: If she tries an EX reversal or ultra 1, they’ll whiff and you can punish. If she doesn’t do anything, your Tsurugi whiffs entirely and she can punish with whatever. Timing the Tsurugi to hit later may work.
Viper: Doesn’t cross her up with this timing and her HP Thunder knuckle/Ultra 1 will win, but her EX Seismo and EX burn kick will lose. Jumping earlier may make the setup work and be very effective.

Whiffs (character doesn’t get hit by the Tsurugi, further testing required to see if later timing will work):

Guy: Whiffs if he crouches, EX Tatsu/Ultra 2 win
Juri: Whiffs if she crouches, EX pinwheel/Ultra 2 win
Cody: Whiffs if he crouches, EX Zonk whiffs you though
El Fuerte: Whiffs him every time with this timing
Hakan: Whiffs him every time with this timing
Blanka: Whiffs him every time with this timing

Doesn’t work (character is too big to get crossed up with this timing, so it doesn’t avoid their reversals. Different timing may work, requires further testing):

Abel
Sagat
Adon
Seth
Zangief
Dee Jay
Fei Long
T. Hawk
Rose
Gen
Gouken

Once again, this was only tested with the specific timing for a safe Tsurugi against Ryu. Different character specific timing may make it safe against characters it currently doesn’t seem to work against. (Fortunately, most of the characters it’s best against are the ones with the easiest reversals.)

Good stuff.

Couldn’t that just be avoided with a backdash? Though it’s a really nice mixup to have.

I hereby give you 10 internets.
Use them well.

Yea i also agree that people think she sucks just because she has changed from 3rd strike. She is still AWSOME! i think that she will be one of the best characters as far as karas and staying in, imo. Also what is the IA tsuagi?

Instant Air Tsurugi. You can’t tiger knee input her tsurugi, so you have to input it as fast as possible from the jump.

Also, after sleeping on it and reading this thread, I realized I was giving up on Makoto way too fast. I barely know half of her tricks (can’t consistently IA tsurugi, haven’t tried using meaty mp.oroshi, haven’t attempted ground cross up, etc), so I think I’ll give her a few weeks. What I’ve been reading so far has kind of rekindled the hype that I had about her before.

You can tk tsurugi. The other way is just easier.

Against Guy:
You can EX Kara is elbow drop if you see him using it on your wakeup. I did this out of prediction in a match and got it to land, Ultra’d and he was done.

hey guys what’s going on.

here is some cool guaranteed technology for the akuma matchup.

anytime he air fireballs your rush punches will own him for free everytime. (which one you use depends on spacing, all own him for free)

heres where the mixup starts - if you want, you can use a delayed EX rush punch that will own him for free, and then juggle if hes in the corner OR you can do the EX rush punch on reaction, which will whiff and prob cross him up, and go straight into karakusa or whatever you want to do. its a gamble like a reset because after the ex rush im think he lands right when you recover.

anyways thats just some cool stuff for that matchup. should keep akuma honest , ill have to try this on ibuki

also for anti air, the only two moves that i would suggest doing are standing mp and cr mk (when they are further away) everything else blows. her DP should only be used when you are baiting a jump imo. if it does hit the juggle combos are intense so it makes sense its not for free everytime